Embracing life after tragedy: Bethlehem mother and son combat adversity with loyalty and love

Bethlehem mother and son face adversity with loyalty and love.

Jacqui Jarret runs down a section of the The D & L Trail in Bethlehem Township… (Emily Robson, THE MORNING…)

November 21, 2012|By Milton D. Carrero, Of The Morning Call

It's a sacred space, that of a mother and child. They once shared the same life — can life ever tear them apart?

The fates of Jacqui Jarret of Bethlehem and her son, Dylan Panebianco, have been so deeply intertwined that in many respects their lives continue to be as one.

"Once you become a parent," Jacqui says, "there's no separating your self-love from your love with your child. It all kind of gets all cooked up together."

Dylan's birth on New Year's Day 1991 ranks first on Jacqui's list of most important experiences. But to understand the depth of their relationship, you must examine what happened 16 years later, when Jacqui was 37. The strength of her bond with her only child is seen in the way they have coped with a tragic memory — her second-biggest life-changing event.

It happened on the day Dylan got his driver's license, Oct. 17, 2007. Jacqui, who then lived in Emmaus, called her father right away to share the news. Jerry Jarret picked up the phone — it was mid-afternoon — and spoke in a drowsy voice. He had spent the night and morning piloting a small airplane and was too exhausted to show his excitement. It would not be the last time that day that Dylan's grandfather would wake up to news about his grandson.

Mother and son then left the Department of Motor Vehicles in Lebanon, where they had gone for faster service than they expected at the driver's license center off Airport Road. Dylan took the wheel and they headed home down a two-lane road near Route 501.

Jacqui was used to having Dylan drive. He drove with his permit for many months before, so she was not concerned. She lay back, her dark sweater sliding on the seat.

It took Jacqui a moment to notice that their car was veering off the road to the right. She covered her face with her right arm as the car swept down the embankment and headed toward a utility pole. Dylan swerved to try to avoid it but couldn't. The right front of the car grazed the pole, the impact smashing the passenger window. Jacqui's arm was pulled out with the shattered glass and severed by the pole as the car kept going past it.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I got into a car accident," were the first words Dylan remembers telling his mom after the car came to a halt.

"There was a point that I knew I had lost my arm, but I knew he didn't know," Jacqui explains. "I had a black sweater, so you really couldn't see the blood."

A couple of people stopped to help before the paramedics arrived. A man improvised a tourniquet with a rag to diminish the surge of blood, just below the elbow.

"Go find my arm!" Jacqui implored the man. The car had ended up on one side of the road and she was sure the arm was on the other. Dylan observed in shock while Jacqui's mind raced.

"Seeing it happen, accepting that it happened, convincing myself that I was going to be OK, worrying about Dylan and how it was going to affect him, all of those things…." She questioned how she could still be conscious in spite of losing so much blood. She focused on the arm.

If they can find my arm, she reasoned, certainly they can put it back on. They transplant kidneys, they can certainly put my own arm in.

"In the field!" Jacqui screamed to the man. After searching persistently, he found it.

Another man had a cooler in his car, which they used to preserve the limb. Jacqui would never see these valiant passers-by again.

"It's strange because it was a terrible situation," Dylan explains. "But after the initial terrible part of the situation, it literally could not have gone any better."

At first, Dylan could not find his cellphone to call his grandpa and Jacqui's phone had flown away in the crash. Dylan finally reached Jarret, who instructed his daughter be sent to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, where his wife, Judy, worked as a nurse.

"Everything is going to be OK," Jarret managed to say before hanging up. He promised to pick Dylan up with Grandma as soon as he could.

"I was in a haze until emergency services arrived," Dylan says. "One ambulance guy gave me a hug and I just completely melted and broke down. Until then it was all, like, unreal."

While the paramedics worked to save Jacqui's life, she worried for her son's well-being.

"My most vivid memory is of me trying to make sure that he was OK," Jacqui says about those moments while she waited to be flown to Lehigh Valley Hospital.

"Tell him that I love him and that I'm OK!" she yelled to the paramedics before the helicopter took off.

Soon after she landed at Lehigh Valley Hospital, doctors decided to transfer her to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. She was flown immediately with the hope that hand surgeon Leonid Katolik could reattach the arm.

The month-long stay at the hospital was one of turmoil, confusion, hope and disappointment, but it was also the place where Dylan and Jacqui would come to heal and experience what they describe as unconditional love.